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It was good- being back and all. More than good, actually. Considering the fact he’d spent a full week in another deadly parallel dimension, he should’ve been feeling ecstatic to be back.
But the thing was…he didn’t.
Of course he was happy to be back. To be alive and back with his mother and Jonathan and his friends. But how could Will ever feel truly content to have been saved from the Upside Down when his best friend, Mike, seemingly wished for another person to be back more than he was happy to have him- Will- back?
In a way, it was still like before. Everything had stayed the same as it was before he’d gone missing on that cold November day. But then again…it hadn’t. In a way, everything had changed too.
His mother, Joyce, had always had a tendency to slightly baby Will, but ever since he’d come back from his “trip to the woods”, it’d increased tenfold, and that was still an understatement. Everyone just treated him now like he was some fragile, breakable creature made of glass- Joyce, Jonathan, his teachers, and hell, even his friends. Everyone.
Except maybe Mike.
Mike was the only one who still looked at him like he was a human being. Like he was a soon-to-be teenager, not a screaming newborn. But even Mike had changed, in ways Will hadn’t wanted to acknowledge before. Because while he still treated him like a normal person, Will knew he wasn’t the first person in the other boy’s life anymore. And as stupid as it sounded, he couldn’t help but feel replaced, somehow.
Because Mike wasn’t his anymore- he’d never been, it was just way harder to pretend now. In a week, someone else had managed to achieve what Will hadn’t been able to in years- have Mike fall in love.
Will knew he had no right to be upset. He wasn’t even, as he desperately tried to tell himself. He was just…well, he just missed Mike. That was a truth that no denying would be able to erase. He missed the Mike he knew before the events of November 6, 1983 had occurred. He missed the Mike that wasn’t in love with a girl who was long gone.
Eleven- or El, as Mike had lovingly nicknamed her- had saved Will. She’d saved the boys, multiple times even, and she was their friend. Also, she was gone now, dead, and somehow still the center of Mike’s universe.
Will had been fascinated and intrigued at first to hear the boys talk about the superpowered girl who they’d found in the woods and who’d saved them, saved him. She was part of the reason he was even alive right now, and a part of him mourned the fact he’d never truly gotten to meet her. Another, bigger part of him however could not stomach hearing her name anymore.
What at first had sounded like the coolest adventure to ever exist soon became a reminder of everything he’d missed, a reminder of everything his friends had lived through while he’d been…well, almost dead.
If that wasn’t enough already, Mike didn’t even seem to be truly happy about Will being back. Well, that wasn’t true- he was happy. Just not as happy as maybe he should have been. Because while he had his friend back, he’d still lost the person who now mattered the most. Eleven. And as messed up as that sounded, Will couldn’t deny he was happy that Mike would never have to choose between his friend and the superpowered girl who’d turned his life upside down.
Because Will didn’t need telepathic powers to know how that’d turn out.